Open the ranking. Then move it.
Everything that decides your feed is a number, and every one of those numbers is printed on this page. The screen that changes them ships with the app.
Ten sliders, end to end.
The three above set what the ranker counts. These seven set how the result feels. Every post is scored on these axes before it reaches you, and each slider is graded, so a nudge stays a nudge. Fifty-seven more, one per topic, wait under Advanced settings.
Surprise me is not a preset.
It is a switch in the preset row that holds Novelty at 0.8 and Discovery at 0.6 until you turn it off, and it lights up while it is on. The four real presets move the balance sliders once and step aside.
Say it, or write it down.
Describe your feed takes a sentence and moves the dials with it. Your feed rules saves a sentence as a standing rule instead, up to twelve of them, 120 characters each. Every rule stays listed as a chip, and any one can be paused without deleting it.
Bound the whole feed in one step.
Friends is not your follow list. It is an inner circle Surf works out from who you actually talk to. Whichever stop you pick is a filter, not a preference: nothing outside it reaches you, however well it scores.
Who you see
Twenty-eight signals, priced.
Every action the app reports, at the weight the ranker gives it. A like is 0.5 and a reply is 7, and that ratio is the design: the feed leans toward what cost you something. The What counts most slider scales the four social rows, and every signal fades with a seven-day half-life.
You said so
Actions you took on purpose. These outweigh everything below them.
- Not interestedthe heaviest signal there is
- −50
- Show less like this
- −20
- Show more like this
- +15
- Share
- +13
- Bookmark
- +10
- Reply
- +7
- Repost
- +5
- Quote
- +5
- Expand the post
- +2
- Swipe a carousel
- +2
- Show morethe thumbs up in the why sheet
- +1.5
- Open the replies
- +1.5
- Unmute a video
- +1.5
- Show lessthe thumbs down in the why sheet
- −1.5
- Open a link
- +1
- Like
- +0.5
You spent attention
Measured, not asked for. Worth less than a thing you chose to do.
- Finish a video
- +5
- Engage within seconds
- +3
- Watch a videoby how much of it you watched
- +0.5 to +3
- Dwell on it
- +2
- Read a thread to the end
- +1.5
- Loop a video
- +1
- Pause on it briefly
- +0.5
- Abandon a reply to it
- −0.5
- Scroll straight past
- −0.5
You just scrolled
The lightest read in the system, and the easiest to overrule.
- Scroll back to it
- +4
- Slow down over it
- +0.8
- Scroll fast past it
- −0.2
1,500 / 400 / 300
Three ways into the slate
Every refresh gathers 1,500 posts by weighted popularity, 400 nearest your interests by vector search, and 300 that people with overlapping taste liked. Accounts you follow are pinned in and never cut by the cap.
0.7
One account cannot flood you
An author's best post in a slate scores in full. Their second is multiplied by 0.7, their third by 0.49, and so on down to a floor of 0.22. Prolific does not beat good.
0.6
What it guessed, capped
Where you have not set a vibe slider, Surf may lean one from what you read, by at most 0.6 on an axis that runs from -1 to +1. Set that slider yourself and the guess is not consulted at all.
1.5x / 2.5x / 4x
The one thing money moves
Posts from a paying account are multiplied by 1.5x on Sapphire, 2.5x on Pro and 4x on Ultra, inside this same formula. It cannot pass a block, a mute or a filter, and it cannot outbid a slider you set.
Every ranked post explains itself.
The reason is a column on the row, stamped by the same query that ordered your feed. No second request, no model, nothing written for you after the fact. Disagree with it and the correction is two buttons down.
Eleven answers, and no others.
Ten name the specific cause. The one that begins “Recommended based on” is what a row gets when none of the others applied, and it is the only sentence that ever plays that part.
- You follow Maya Chen, so their posts show up here.
- You interact with Maya Chen a lot.
- People you follow also follow Maya Chen.
- This is close to things you have engaged with.
- Recommended because you engage with film photography.
- This is gaining traction right now with 412 likes and climbing.
- Surf is showing you Maya Chen to broaden your feed beyond the accounts you follow.
- Someone sent you this post in a message.
- Latest shows your feed in date order, newest first.
- Recommended based on the creators and topics you engage with.
- This is your own post.
Or switch the whole thing off.
Newest first, nothing scored, nothing learned. The app leaves the sliders on screen, greyed out, and says plainly that they have stopped mattering. Blocks, mutes and the comfort filters keep working, because they were never part of ranking.